


On the Shoulders of Giants

by heli0s



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, One Shot, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:22:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heli0s/pseuds/heli0s
Summary: The world is a heavy burden to carry.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Reader
Comments: 9
Kudos: 75





	On the Shoulders of Giants

It begins in the desert, perhaps. Under the sweltering Sahara glare flaying the very skin from your back. Between fine grains of sand—sharp with windstorm.

On the ridged mouth of a shared canteen, taking turns prudently lapping the only water left for the next several days. Two concerned glances at your chafed-red brow and hushed whispers when you trudge ahead.

 _Is it too soon_?

Maybe in Antigua—that hotel where the three of you shared a room with the greenery outside peeking in. Soft and pale gauze curtains fluttering in the breeze. The humid air wafting over necks and exposed shoulders.

Maybe it begins with stolen glances when Bucky sits by the window with a book, splendorous in sunlight. Different than the desert. Delicate. Steve laying an ice pack on your shoulder, settling longer than he should. Jerking your attention from the window with his tongue, lashing admonishment to conceal the worry.

_Last night was too close. Again._

Or, maybe in a place more ordinary. The front lawn on a muted and moonless night with your terrors simmering in your mouth. The compound’s lights glaring so starkly it chases even the North Star away.

Nothing but a breeze and a memory. A coincidentally timed breath from three sets of lungs and the scent of an onerous exhale, wet with wine and confession. Conversation nicked off with a palm faced forward at you, a scolding from his familiar deep voice, dispelling the stifling miasma of shame and self-sacrifice and duty.

On the point of their incisors cleaving into your melancholy.

At the start of Steve’s silence and the last echo of Bucky’s heavy heart when he suggests, “Put the world down, honey.”

Two pairs of blue, one soldered steel, the other glimmering green, following your irate footfalls across the yard and back into the confines of the facility.

They turn to each other under the ink, and maybe it begins there.

-

A press of lips to lips. Chest to chest. Steve takes the lead in Minsk with his toes pointed at yours, head ducking down with necessary patience, asking. Mouth open, only minutes ago holding back a curse, now still. Sweet.

The three of you slick with blood and sweat, hearts like war-drums pulsing adrenaline in the back of the Quinjet. Throats raw and hoarse from screaming at each other in a demolished building.

For an instant, you’re dizzy, and it feels like a mistake.

Then Bucky anchors you back to earth while the frigid world continues howling outside.

-

The mission could be categorized as a success. Objectives were met, enemies were neutralized, hostages were rescued, and the write up will outline perfectly the night when the three of you tore through a Hydra cell and left nothing but the burning shambles of its structure—a crumbling skeleton laid bare in the snow.

Yet, the stain of a single extinguished life was all you saw inside. A boy. Sixteen, at most– taking his final breath in a capsule. And Bucky had screamed there was nothing you could do over the gunfire. The boy had been dying for days, maybe. Weeks. Months.

But you were lost in the gaunt concave flesh of his cheeks and the parting of his dry lips.

Lost in the way his face resembled your own face when they found you after the kidnapping. Lost following the puckered trail of holes in his wrists and neck— injections. Experimentation. Torture.

So lost that when the bullet ripped into your leg you hardly felt it.

-

“Put the fucking world down?”

In the cabin of the jet, it grows livid with venom until it splatters onto the tip of Bucky’s boot. Steve, true to form, steps in, advances until your heel finds the wall.

Small and eclipsed by his mass, you still snarl and pound your fists on his chest, wrath only incurred further by his quiet. Incurred by his dismissals. By his willful ignorance of how you fucking _feel._

“How? How can I when _that_ —” Sharp thrusting motion of your arm, flexing like a wire about to snap. “When _that_ is still out there? Or did you forget?”

To the right, a pair of shoulders sink with a sigh, heavy from the night’s pitiless gravity.

Bucky returns to your attention with his earnest eyes searching your face and his sincere mouth calling your name softly. Always too eager to settle the argument with his calm—too eager to be the martyr between tempers. Silent while the flames lick him charred.

“We haven’t.”

Blue meets red and the fury dissipates as Steve’s hand grazes your cheek. Well-worn gloves brush a strand of wayward hair from your temple, warm leather tips trailing down to your chin. He blurs when the wrath in your nose thaws into anguish.

“You want to carry that weight.”

“But you can’t.”

The guilt comes and chews holes inside your belly.

Bucky touches the wound on your thigh, poorly patched with uneven gauze carelessly wrapped. “Not all the time. Not everybody. Not without losing yourself.”

Of course they haven’t forgotten. They stayed by your bedside for weeks, after all. Worked you back to health. Cared for you. Carved out space in their hearts for your return home.

A twitch of your mouth that they track with their eyes. A reddening of your nose they lament. Steve’s thumb flattens the first beaded droplet against your jaw. Wicks the rest away behind your shoulder. His words vibrate through your body, sinks right into your bones.

“Can’t lose you.” Regret. “Not you.” Grief. “Not again.” Heartbreak.

He’s the mouthpiece for both, speaking the truth they’ve hidden. Mission after mission, growing affection for someone too much like themselves. Except fragile in all the ways they aren’t. Only human and only woman. Mortality lives in the forefront of his mind. Loss and fear rear their heads to remind him of the month you spent captive.

Every time you lean too far into a fight, Bucky’s eyes are on him, frantic.

Golden hair falls forward as Steve bends, lifting your chin until you meet his gaze.

Bucky watches too, echoing like a disciple. “Won’t lose you. Not ever again.”

And your world freezes, stuck in the arctic tundra of Steve’s measured observation until Bucky’s hand finds your back, easing you forward, melting time back into motion.

-

Back home, pressed between them, your heart picks up a beat too frenetic. Gloved hands find the buckles and zips of your suit— makes quick work of them. A shift and a groan and Steve’s just as exposed, all warm and hard, dragging you to the floor. Bucky behind, hand knotted in your hair, tugging your neck revealed, pulling a gasp open before he smothers it shut.

The flight left three mouths hungry and kiss bruised. Autopilot steered a course through the clouds pierced with starshine and landed while you remained entwined in them, taking turn finding lips and stealing breaths. Needing more.

You’ve thought about it, many times, safely inside the borders of your imagination. Always looked away before someone noticed. Over the years. Over sand dunes. Inside rainforests. The Sahara. Antigua. Kowloon and Key West. All coordinates in-between.

Envisioned the rough calloused pads of their hands contrasting soft and warm lips. How they might hold you—perhaps like that night. Bucky’s arms beneath your trembling body, pulling you into his lap. Steve knelt over, breath fanning warmth over your face. The fragile sob that left when you heard them.

_We’re here. We’ve got you._

Envisioned how they might mirror each other. Two souls entwined over the century like twin flames, flickering bright but blue, come to burn you in ecstasy. Come again to save you from agony.

They shimmer like heat waves now. Like the way light refracts in water. Or like the way your eyes unfocus during the high of a blistering release. Imagination could never do them justice. Your own hands never could never blaze so hot.

“Come here.”

It rages desperate in the darkness of Steve’s room. You chase it with two at your heels, scrambling for purchase, freeing adoration entombed for months or years—you don’t know. Unsure now where you even exist when all you can feel are their hands and lips.

Monoliths. Saviors. Gods.

Like a fever, stretching your very cells apart and twisting you around in devastating fire. Frenzied arrangements of limbs until the puzzle fits—too eager to even make it to the bed. Steve’s tongue in your mouth, drowning whimpers. Bucky gripping your throat, sucking reminders of them on your chest. Someone’s hand between your thighs, palm slick. Rubbing ardent patterns on swollen flesh until they both plunge.

A hovering touch over the bandaged wound, barely-there flutters of fingertips to the bruised skin around. Hardly registering when your entire body feels shattered to bits by them.

“Don’t do it again.”

It sounds like punishment. For arguing. For endangering yourself.

“Can’t take it, honey.”

It sounds like love. Desperate to be known and suffered.

It spreads all over. Chains your soul to its magnitude and sinks its teeth in deep. Fills up your entire being until it pours out in a weeping litany of their names. Between Steve and Bucky, you sob, quivering and encased in their arms. Like that moonless night.

_We’re here._

It sounds like devotion. Lifted. Exalted.

And lift you, they do. Send your soul flying. Take you up into the sky and let you reach the clouds and the heavens with a single resonant cry. Gasps and stutters following a flood of exhales running over your bare back. Behind your eyes is the rush of the milky way, a million and one lights splintering your breath.

When your body drops, the stars fade. Above, darkness returns viscous with memory. Bucky brands a kiss to your nape, bruises it tender like your insides. Murmurs a plead into your shoulder.

“Put the world down, lover.”

Steve moves a damp strand behind your ear, finger trailing over your lips, tucking affection inside your cheek.

Together now. Melted by it until three blends into one.

 _We’ll hold it up for you. We’ve got you now_.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for youngmoneymilla's 15k challenge on tumblr during a depressive slump lol. Let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!


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